Cooking
If you avoid chicken breasts because they taste too lean and dry, does Ali Slagle have a recipe for you.
- Share full article
Among fans of chicken breasts, some love them for their leanness, and others in spite of it. Ali Slagle’s got great news for that second group.
In her butter-basted chicken breasts, she repeatedly spoons fragrant brown butter over the delicate white meat as it cooks. This method caramelizes the surface of the chicken while still keeping the interior juicy and tender. Nutty, golden garlic and whole branches of woodsy herbs (rosemary, thyme or sage) infuse the meat with flavor. It makes for a speedy weeknight chicken dish that’s a cut above, even if you usually like ’em lean.
Featured Recipe
Butter-Basted Chicken Breasts
View Recipe →
Garlic also makes a crucial appearance in my one-pan shrimp scampi with crispy gnocchi. But, unlike the mellow nuggets of smashed, whole garlic in Ali’s chicken, these cloves are grated or minced to keep them pungent as they melt into the hot embrace of butter and white wine. The recipe calls for shelf-stable gnocchi, which blister as they come in contact with the pan, speckling brown all over and soaking up all that irresistible scampi sauce.
Wine — in this case, Shaoxing (or dry sherry) — also anchors the sauce for this pepper steak, a boldly seasoned version of the classic Chinese American stir-fry from Eric “Doctoring Peppers” Kim. Leaning into the mix of onions and green bell peppers (or thin-skinned Cubanelle peppers), Eric’s iteration is equal parts vegetables and meat, suffused with ginger, soy sauce and black pepper. To up the vegetable quotient even further, take Colt’s suggestion in the notes and throw in some sliced mushrooms after searing the meat but before adding the onions and peppers. A little extra earthiness can’t miss.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.